Fish, Food and Allied Workers (FFAW) union call for meeting with Mowi. Local workers anxious about loss of work.
Over the weekend, Mowi East Managing Director Jamie Gaskill told reporters that the company had completed 87 per cent of the clean up effort and the company expected to finish by the end of this week.
SalmonBusiness reported on Monday that Mowi has taken a €5 million hit due to salmon mortalities comprising approximately half of all Northern Harvest’s fish.
In an interview with NTV, FFAW President Keith Sullivan said that 2.6 million dead fish “is not good for anybody particularly” and that it wanted to meet Mowi to discuss the environmental impact of the die-offs.
“If there is going to be an impact, people need to know that they are going to be taken care of,” said Sullivan.
The Fish, Food and Allied Workers represents 15000 persons throughout Newfoundland and Labrador, most of whom are employed in the commercial fishing industry.
The TV channel also reported that suspension of 10 licences could be putting salmon farm workers out of work for the time being.
Pool Cove resident Patsy Caines said:” It’s kind of devastating for the area, there’s a lot of men and women who depend on that to feed their families. This is not good”.
Northern Harvest spokesperson Jason Card stated last week to SalmonBusiness that die-off has no “environmental impact or damage” and that “mortalities are not being pumped into the sea but pumped into vessels then sent to a plant”.